Lots Of Riding, Lots Of Color

We’ve left our campground at 9am every morning and returned late in the afternoon. We’ve ridden to almost 11,000 feet and back down by the river. The temps are chilly at the higher elevations and warm enough by the lake to sit outside in the afternoons. We’ve dined like kings–two grills going in the evening with each couple’s choice of meat and we’ve then contributed side dishes.

The aspen leaves are turning–every day when we climb the mountains we see new color–maples with a vivid orange/red color and always the golden color of the aspen leaves. In the higher, colder elevations the leaves are dropping fast and winter is not far away.

The dogs are a large part of this journey as you can see.

Probably a patented mining claim and the owners built a great little cabin with outstanding views. Still standing buildings from a historic mining town.

Every rig out here including ours has small water tanks, we miss the 100 gallon water tank on our 40′ motorhome. One of the RV parks in town, Lizzie and Charlie’s is kind of enough to allow the public to use their pay showers. We’ve taken advantage of this courtesy a couple of times stretching our tank capacities. Lizzie and Charlie’s RV Park also allows the public to use their dump station for a very reasonable fee of $5. On the other hand the new RV park in town, South-Forty RV Park doesn’t allow the public to use anything at their park and were quite rude about our asking.

This next group of photos was taken with my iPhone–can you believe I forgot the camera that day!

On the shores of this reservoir we heard elk bugling!

On day four of riding, one of our group needed a rest day. His gutsy wife took their four seat-er side by side RZR and took it up and over two rocks like a pro. The guys told her where to put her wheels to start and she drove right up and over those rocks–yea for the girls!!! Why one of us was not filming this little adventure, I have no idea and the following photo doesn’t show the difficulty–Lacey dog gives some perspective to how narrow a spot it was.

On day four we found some spectacular fall colors, a road grader and more dust than any of us has ever seen on a trail–we had to stay back at least a quarter mile from each other to avoid the clouds of powdery dust the grader generated!

I best get ready for today’s ride–lunches to make, water bottles to fill–time to ride–life is good!

Beautiful photos —-Love the changing colors — here in the South we dont have Aspens and Cottonwoods—–I miss them and when i think of them I remember Ernest Hemmingway and Sun Valley as the leaves would come floating down the creek — “Best of all – he loved the fall” Continue to have fun on your trip —

We are returning to Ridgway so we can head back to Telluride to see there is color next week. I would love to see the fall colors from the gondola. Looks like a great time exploring with friends. Glad it worked out for you this year. Beautiful fall colors.